


Hello, My Name is Boy

by ftbprotocol



Series: Bunnies I Might Continue [6]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst and Humor, Child Abuse, Child Neglect, Food Issues, Gen, Gen Work, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Not Beta Read, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Self-Indulgent, Self-Insert, Swearing, Tags May Change
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-31
Updated: 2020-08-25
Packaged: 2021-03-06 00:54:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 5,942
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25634620
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ftbprotocol/pseuds/ftbprotocol
Summary: At the age of 10, an accident at school lands Harry in the hospital with a concussion. Unfortunately, the person who wakes up is not the same little boy. An adult's perspective on Harry's home and school life does not paint a good picture. They think it's hard enough surviving in the 'normal' world. They're in for a rude awakening when it sinks in that magic is real, and that they really are trapped in a book series. At 10 years old going on 30, they are too old for this shit.
Series: Bunnies I Might Continue [6]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1809706
Comments: 11
Kudos: 89
Collections: A Collection of Beloved Inserts





	1. Who are horse-woman and pig-man?

**Author's Note:**

> A while ago I went on a Self-insert reading binge and this little story is the result of it. Finally decided to post it! It's not exactly a self-insert, more an OC exploration of one. It's a way for me to have fun with the tropes as well as explore some of the more forked up things in the magical world. It'll be a mix of humour and angst for the most part.
> 
> For now I’m just gonna treat it as a two-shot but may add more chapters as inspiration hits me. If I do add more it will not be a retread of the books (beyond what is necessary for the story), but more an exploration of specific scenarios. Basically the troubles and tribulations that come with an adult brain in a child’s body. The tags will change depending on where my head goes. I'm leaning towards Snape playing a pretty major role as well as not sorting 'Harry' into Gryfindor (I'm personally a fan of Hufflepuff Harry) but am undecided at the moment.

Waking up in a hospital is quite the disorienting experience.

The room is instantly recognizable as one of those shared hospital rooms with multiple patients. Each bed is separated by a cream dividing curtain, so I can’t see who is beside me, but the one across from me is open with the person awake and eating from a tray. I'd never spent any significant time in a hospital before but there is no question that's where I was.

The only problem is that I had no idea how I'd ended up here.

Beside me, a nurse is replacing an IV bag while another is speaking quietly to some people at the foot of the bed. I don’t recognize them, but assume they have a good reason to be there. Perhaps they‘re the family of one of the other patients?

It isn’t until the man at the foot of my bed’s voice is raised in agitation that I actually focus on them instead of staring blankly around the room.

Then the nurse at the foot of the bed looks my way.

A flurry of questions and worried exclamations are thrown at me as soon as the people in the room realize I’m awake. Why the thin woman and the fat man are concerned is a bit baffling but it is hard to focus on what they are saying. It's like I can hear the words, but my brain isn't able to process them properly.

The nurse next to them manages to hush them and approaches my bedside with a raised clipboard.

“Hi there," He speaks slowly and clearly, his accent clearly British. "Everything is going to be ok. You’ve been very brave so far and I just need you to answer a few questions, ok?” The nurse says this in that higher pitched, almost sing-songy voice you use when talking to kids. It reminded me of a professor in university who used to talk that way to the class. Used to piss the students off with how condescending it sounded.

“Nod if you understood what I just said, can you do that for me?”

Resigned, I nodded my head, confused but hoping he would just go away if I played along. I’d only been awake for a few minutes but already I felt tired.

“Ok good, now if you feel up to talking, can you tell me your name?”

I opened my mouth, but what came out shocked me so much afterwards that my mouth shut with an audible click. “Boy.”

What the fuck.

I panicked. What happened to my voice!? And why did I say that? That wasn’t my name!

In my shock I distantly noticed the nurse turn to look at the mismatched couple at the end of the bed. Their mouths moved, but I couldn’t hear anything over the ringing in my ears.

For some reason, I could hear the nurse no problem though, “I’m glad you’re feeling well enough to joke.” The nurse smiled.

Why, when I tried to bring up a memory of people saying my name, that was all I could hear? That and another word hissed, but not as a name, as an insult.

"It's alright Harry, you're not in trouble." The nurse assured, his smile dropping from his face, reacting to my panic.

I tried to speak. To deny that my name was Harry. To most especially deny that I was a boy! Or that my name was boy! But I couldn't make a sound past the panic choking my throat.

"Now Harry, none of your usual lip." The thin woman approached the other side of the bed, while the large man stayed at the foot of it with his arms crossed, scowling. "You need to answer the...nurse's questions."

A small corner of my mind noted the pause and wondered if she had something against male nurses.

Blackness started to creep into the corner of my vision and I gladly welcomed it. This was all just too weird. It felt real, but couldn't possibly be. Maybe if I closed my eyes and slept, I'd wake up and it would all make sense.

"Ah no Harry, keep your eyes open for me." The nurse gently touched my shoulder. "You hit your head pretty hard, I need to ask you some questions first."

Still with that condescending baby voice, I thought to myself. Against my desires, a larger part of myself forced my eyes back open. It was almost like I was conditioned to respond to authority figures.

"Tell the truth now, this is no place for your wild and false stories." The unknown woman cut in, her high-pitched voice cutting through me and waking me up more than anything else had so far.

"Now I just have a few quick questions and then we'll see about you getting some rest, alright?"

I hesitantly nodded, grateful to be able to look away from the strange woman and her weird demands.

"How's your head feeling? Do you have a headache? Any nausea?"

I answered no to the nurse's questions, the only real problem being how tired I was. He asked me a few more questions, and I answered, but I had a lot of trouble keeping my eyes open through the whole thing.

"Have you ever had a concussion before? A concussion is-"

"No he hasn't." The thin woman cut in. "He's perfectly healthy."

"...who are you?" I asked, blinking blearily at the woman. Who did she think she was, answering for me?

"Nephew! What did I just say before? The nurse is very busy and doesn't have time for your games."

What. I'm related to this woman? That's impossible. I think I'd remember having a British aunt!

"Hmm." The nurse said, making a note on their clipboard. "I think it's time to let the boy rest. We can discuss what you have to expect from his concussion outside." The nurse turned and walked away, my supposed aunt and the big man following him.

I would've said something about his rude dismissive words, but my eyes, which I could now barely keep open, slid closed one last time and stayed shut. I tried to say something in protest at being called a ‘boy.’ But all that came out was a nonsensical jumble.

I fell asleep to the sound of the woman asking the nurse if her son could 'catch' a concussion from her nephew.

* * *

Leaving the hospital the next day was quite the ordeal. Not only was I still reeling from the discovery of my shrunken body and the sudden sex change, which resulted my very first panic attack, but also the fact that the thin woman and large man were my guardians.

I'd tried to protest that it couldn't possibly be true, and refused to go anywhere with them.

Unfortunately, the first conversation with the nurses seemed to be the precursor to how my so-called ‘family’ would handle me. My ‘relatives’ profusely apologized for me, claiming I was 'acting out' and that it was common behaviour they were working to rid me of.

I may or may not have been in hysterics when they dragged me away. I was probably screaming about how I didn't know them and to be let go as the big fat man dragged me painfully by the arm. What finally got me to be quiet was a meaty hand smacking me across the bum.

It was so painful and shocking that I was struck silent.

I don’t come out of my frozen stupor until it’s too late.

They stuffed me into the back of a small car and spent the whole thirty minute drive berating me for embarrassing them and causing a scene. As soon as we arrived at their home, without saying a word, they shoved me into a cupboard under the stairs.

The action is so out of nowhere it finally makes me move. I try to open the door, pushing against it, only for nothing to happen. I hear the slight rattle of a lock and can’t believe it. Did they seriously lock me in a cupboard?

“I better not hear one peep from you if you want any super!” The giant of a man who is supposedly my uncle shouts.

I flinch back from the anger in his voice, the body acting on its own.

There’s a bunch of blankets on the ground around me, I can just make them out through the light shining through the cupboard door. I arrange them as best I can into a bed and lie down. Maybe if I go to sleep, I’ll wake up and this all will have been a crazy dream.

A crazy dream bordering on a nightmare. But a dream nonetheless.

I close my eyes and hope. Nothing had changed after the last two times I’d woken up, but I figured the third time’s the charm.

* * *

Of course, my wishes for the new reality to be nothing but a dream never get granted.

Instead I am treated to a new and confusing reality. The first few days, no, the first few weeks, are extremely hard. My so-called relatives expect me to immediately go back to performing a truly ridiculously long chore list. If I do or say anything to protest, I’m punished with no meals.

I spend a lot of time locked in the cupboard and starving those first weeks.

Apparently saying anything other than ‘yes aunt Petunia’ counts as back talk.

But eventually it sinks in that nothing is going to change. That I’m not going to magically wake up one day and be back in my old life. I do however come up with a few rationalizations on how this has happened to me.

One, is that the real me is currently in a coma due to some accident I’ve forgotten. The world around me is some strange world my brain has come up with to explain what has happened to me. The idea doesn’t fully work. For example I can’t figure out why my brain would decide I’m a boy.

Two, is that reincarnation is real. The fall and the concussion somehow allowed the memories of a past life to take over, erasing the young boy who used to inhabit the body. Although the problem with this theory is that it meant I also travelled decades into the past.

Three is similar to Two only instead of reincarnation it’s possession. But I don’t think there’s a little boy cohabiting this body? At least I can’t talk to him if there is. I do however get urges to say and do specific things when exposed to a stimulus. Like flinching when uncle Vernon moves unexpectedly. Or tiptoeing around the house when the family is home.

Giving up on figuring out an explanation and just trying to survive in this new environment soon takes up all of my time and attention. 

Later, much much later, I found out the truth of how I ended up in the hospital.

At first I was told that I'd climbed a tree like the reckless hooligan I was, while taunting my cousin. However, I climbed too high and the branch I was on broke. I was lucky I didn't hit the ground head first, or I'd be dead.

This was all told to me while I was still in the hospital. When there were others around who could hear them. I’d been too panicked to notice that they were surprisingly cold for people who claimed to be my family. It wasn't until I was discharged and sent 'home' that I realized why I’d found them so off putting.

It was because of how false their act had rung.

Over the course of the month after returning from hospital, once I started to accept my new reality, I came to heavily doubt their version of events. Not only because blaming me for everything was a theme for them. But from the abortive motions my uncle made towards me, like he was holding himself back from something, like he wanted to do more than just grab me, made me suspect my uncle as the true culprit.

In fact, if there hadn't been multiple witnesses from my school, I would have assumed the whole story was fabricated. A cover-up for my uncle’s behaviour. But apparently a teacher had witnessed the event, albeit from a distance, and had been the one to call an ambulance when I stayed unconscious.

So I really had fallen from a tree. And my cousin had been standing under it. That much I knew was true. I severely doubted the claimed reason for why I had been in the tree as I got to know my cousin. In fact, overhearing a bunch of his friends bragging to each other about how they hadn’t gotten in trouble when I fell was the final clue.

Being sent to an elementary school had certainly been a shock on its own. Especially when I finally learned this body’s name. Harry Potter was a very odd thing to hear called and have it mean me. It cemented in my mind that this was all a very detailed coma dream.

I didn’t act on this belief. Many nights spent starving in my cupboard proved that I needed to treat this as real.

So I mostly kept my head down and tried not to stick out.

My ‘cousin’ went to the same school, unfortunately. He also was in the same class. I tried to ignore the little shit as much as I could. Especially at school. His taunting and pushing got on my nerves but...

I quickly found out that any attempt to ‘tattle’ on Dudley to a teacher would end in the same result every time. The little monster would claim I was either making stuff up to get him in trouble, or claim that my injuries were self-inflicted. The little bastard even had the audacity to bite himself and claim it was me.

I thought about running away a lot in that first year, of course I did. The only problem was I didn't know what would happen to me out in the world. Would an orphanage take me in? What did they do with obvious runaways?

What stopped me in the end was the dread of being sent back to this awful house. At 10 going on 11 there just was no way it would end well for me. Maybe if I had confidence in the British child services I would have done it. But my brief exposure to how the school handled my complaints did not leave me with any hope.

My attempt to finally do something about my living situation started with a trip to the counselor's office. I told them everything my aunt and uncle had said and done to me, and ended my confession by stating I wanted to live with someone else. Unfortunately, at that point I had no idea they had been telling the adults in the school that I was a compulsive liar.

The counsellor followed up on the things I said though, so there was that at least. But apparently my reputation had already primed them into believing my aunt and uncle over me. It didn't take a very long conversation, with overly exaggerated disappointment from my aunt, for them to dismiss everything I said.

My stomach cramped horribly from lack of food for days after that.

It would have been for weeks, if I hadn't started 'stealing' food from the pantry and hiding it around the house. One advantage to the many chores I was tasked to do, was that it gave me unsupervised time in rooms with lots of storage.

I was also tasked with taking out the garbage every few days, which I took shameless advantage of. Every trip to the car port to deposit a full bag in the bin was used as an opportunity to take food that had been thrown out and either quickly scarf it down or store it behind the shelves.

It wasn't much, given that most of it would go mouldy if I left it out for a couple days. The most reliable scavenges were the bread crusts cut off every day for Dudley and the uneaten fruit he'd toss in the bin.

Eventually, I even started to rummage through the school garbage bins. I quickly discovered that they were a treasure trove of uneaten and unopened wrapped crackers, fruit and vegetables. Even the odd sandwich. All food that the picky eaters in my class would throw away so their parents didn't realize they weren't eating what was put in their lunch.

Getting into the cafeteria lunch bins was harder, but worth the effort to do on occasion. The biggest problem was not getting caught.

The constant awareness of my surroundings eventually took a mental toll. It wasn't noticeable at first. Every time I was home I needed to have half an ear out for my 'relatives' to avoid being snuck up on. It only took a few pushing incidents to realize that to avoid being hurt I needed to stay on my guard. And that when in a room with them I always had to keep one eye on them.

Of course, even if I could hear or see them coming, that didn't mean I would dodge what was coming. That always led to harsher attempts the next time. I quickly learned that different reactions appeased them in different ways. Dudley enjoyed exaggerated reactions. Petunia preferred instant apologies and a downcast expression. Vernon I just learned to roll with and exaggerate in a similar manner to Dudley.

School, much as I’d initially hated it, came to offer a temporary reprieve.

Most of the students refused to play with me for fear of retaliation from Dudley. Some participated in his harassment during breaks, but most just ignored me. I learned to distrust when a kid initiated something with me. More often than not they were playing a joke on me for their own amusement or at Dudley's behest.

The one place I was able to relax in, I had to fight for the right to over many months. The librarian did not trust me to be left alone with the books, not after I'd supposedly destroyed some of Dudley's a year ago. It took multiple lunch breaks begging to be let in to read, instead of playing outside like I was supposed to, before being allowed in. And after that I had to endure reading 'age appropriate' books in full view of the librarian.

The day I was allowed to sit in the back corner of the library and read what I wanted was the best day I'd had since the start of this waking nightmare.

Only one other thing broke up the boredom going through year 5 brought (grade 4 in America). I needed to keep all of my grades lower than Dudley's. Imagine my surprise when I was accused of cheating because of what I had thought were mediocre grades once I returned to school from the hospital.

Apparently I was worse than a mediocre student with a history of cheating. What became challenging was trying to figure out how many questions to get wrong to be lower than Dudley, while also getting a passing grade.

Imagine being asked the maths question 1 + 1 = ? and purposely getting it wrong. That was how it felt.

Well it wasn't quite that bad. We were working on decimals and fractions now. Though they may as well have been that easy. I never would have thought that deliberately answering a question wrong could be so hard. Ironically I had to resort to 'cheating' to ensure my wrong answers were believable.

Eventually, by the end of the school year, I’d settled into a decent routine. I decided the best way to deal with this strange reality where I lived with people named after fictional characters was to treat it like it was real. And make plans for emancipation.

Little did I know that my upcoming birthday would provide a shock almost as bad as waking up in a child’s body.


	2. Turning 11 and I'm a What?

To summarize where I was mentally on the eve of my eleventh birthday: I'd become unrecognizable as the person I'd been just before the accident.

It was to be expected, I guess. I had no memory of what my life as 'boy' had been up until that point. Not beyond the strange habits and instinctive reactions to stimuli. It was basically impossible for me to maintain who I remembered being as a middle aged adult.

Other children approaching me now led to me immediately thinking of ways to make them leave me alone. Any attention paid to me was always assumed to be a bad thing. Adults, be they teachers or neighbours or strangers, were to be tolerated but not trusted. Nothing I said could counter their negative impressions of me, so I no longer tried.

I didn't like this new me, but it was necessary. If I wanted to survive until I was legally able to leave the abusive home, I needed to do whatever it took to survive. I'd long since pushed aside the strange similarities to the fictional book series I read a decade ago and dedicated myself to just living through each day.

Many months after my 'accident', on the day of my eleventh birthday, I was busy making breakfast as usual. Of course I only knew thanks to my 'cousin' bragging how I wouldn't be getting any presents. But otherwise the day was nothing special to me. And it didn't seem to be to my relatives either.

As soon as Uncle Vernon came in and sat at the table, it was my job to go get the morning paper and the mail, while Aunt Petunia served him his morning coffee. I had no reason to suspect that today would be any different.

However, when I opened the door and picked everything up something strange caught my eye. On top of the pile, in an envelope sealed in wax, was a letter to me. I walked back into the kitchen, debating if I should hide it from them. What if it was a caseworker finally contacting me about getting out of this house?

But I knew that couldn't be what it was. They would have sent their letter in a normal envelope.

And they certainly wouldn't have addressed it to the cupboard under the stairs.

I dumped the paper and the mail next to Uncle Vernon and walked back to the oven, strange envelope in hand. After quickly flipping the bacon I broke the wax seal, hands shaking for some strange reason.

I barely had time to read the words 'Hogwarts' before the letter was ripped from my limp grip.

"Where did you get this!?" Aunt Petunia screeched.

"It's for me." I forced myself to say, numb.

What followed were some of the strangest moments in my many months of living here. My aunt and uncle seemed genuinely afraid. And not just at the fact that the letter was addressed to where I slept. Though I later overheard them worrying about it. No, they were afraid of what the people who'd written the letter would do to them.

It was mind boggling. And easier to focus on than the fancy crest and school name I'd seen at the top of the letter. It had to be a prank, right?

Though two things they said made me start to think that there was more to the letter than I wanted to admit.

"But he hasn't done anything freakish in months!"

"I thought the concussion had knocked the freakishness right out of him!"

I never saw the rest of that letter, and didn't know what happened to it. Instead I tried to forget I'd ever seen it. In fact, if the following days had remained normal, I might have succeeded in convincing myself it had all been a hallucination.

Instead, more and more letters arrived.

By **owl**.

Owls hanging out in the neighbourhood trees in broad daylight, even. The crazy cat lady who lived down the lane even came to visit one afternoon asking if everything was alright.

All of this led to me asking one morning over pancakes. "Am I… a wizard?"

I didn't want it to be true. I wanted it to be a mistake. I'd been trapped in this life for too long and had long since dismissed the coma theory. But these events were making me reassess once again.

They freaked out of course.

"There's no such thing!" They screamed and punished me for asking. A child would probably have interpreted it as anger. But all I saw was fear.

Of course they never bothered to explain any of what was going on, so it was hard to be sure. Or maybe it was because they didn't explain. Had they tried I would have of course assumed they were lying. But the fact that they refused to speak about it made it feel more and more real.

By now the letters had been arriving in a deluge. The neighbours were starting to notice something was going on. And just the other day I'd caught Vernon looking up cheap vacations to the countryside.

"If you don't answer, are they going to send someone in person next?" I asked a few days later over morning breakfast. I was mostly just thinking out loud, trying to remember what came next. Whatever it was, I was dreading it.

The letters for the last few days had been addressed to 'the third largest bedroom.' They'd stopped locking me in the cupboard and had even given me Dudley's room of broken toys. They were currently aggressively pretending everything was normal so I was back to making breakfast. Though I was no longer allowed to get the mail.

The question made Vernon and Petunia pause.

"Who are you talking about, boy?" Vernon gruffly ruffled his newspaper, pretending to be engrossed in it.

"These people are getting very persistent. Do you really want to see what happens when they give up on the mail and send someone instead?"

Just this morning a veritable mountain of letters had been waiting on the doorstep. And that wasn't taking into account the stacks left on every window sill, at the back door, and even somehow in the fireplace.

My complete lack of interest in the letters had thankfully stopped my relatives from trying to hide them from me. Though my reluctance to open one stemmed from dread, not from anything silly like obeying their orders.

"Maybe…" Petunia hesitated, looking queasy at the idea of a crazy stranger coming to visit, like I knew she would. "Maybe it would be a good idea Vernon."

Vernon harrumphed. I stuffed a piece of bacon in my mouth while everyone was busy staring at him. The burned tongue was worth it.

"But how do we even reply!" He slammed his paper down on the table, almost knocking over his fresh cup of coffee.

An insistent tapping on the kitchen window, plus Dudley's squeal of excitement made me look over and see the small owl perched on the window sill.

"Maybe they'll deliver it." I pointed to the owl.

I'm not sure what it was that made them decide to answer. If it was the belief that someone coming to our home when the letters failed was the worst possible option. Or if it was the enticing idea that the letters would stop once they replied. But maybe it was also my own calm and understated reaction to the letters.

I wasn't really calm of course. I was actually freaking the fuck out.

I'd accepted the idea of reincarnation in the past as the most likely reason for my current situation. But these letters were proving that the similarities to a fictional world were more than just the names and circumstances.

What was even more worrying was that neither Vernon nor Petunia were **that** surprised by the letters. They treated them as a real threat from the very beginning. And when they replied and all the letters stopped, they breathed a sigh of relief.

In fact, beyond shoving one of the unopened letters in my hands and saying it was my responsibility now, they didn't bring up the episode ever again. For the rest of the summer they zealously pretended like that whole week never happened.

I almost wished I could do the same.

One thing that did change was that Petunia and Vernon started to look at me differently. They started complaining again about how expensive it was to clothe and feed me. I immediately started stashing food in the usual places in preparation.

I also read the letter… eventually. I can admit that I avoided reading it for so long out of a deep sense of dread. I pushed it to the back of my mind and told myself I'd read it tomorrow.

I did this for weeks.

The end of summer came far too soon. I passed most of it in a haze of disbelief, constantly wondering every night if the next time I woke up I'd be back in the real world. I couldn't possibly be where I thought I was. Could I?

One small detail, my lack of preparedness for school, eventually pulled me out of my head enough to talk to Petunia. For some reason I had expected someone to come take me to get my supplies. Subconsciously I had probably been waiting for them.

Instead, no one came.

"So… how am I supposed to get this stuff?" I asked Petunia, showing her the list of books and equipment that came with the letter.

"And why should I know?" She snapped in a tone I've become very familiar with. It meant she didn't want to talk but she wasn't angry enough to punish me for speaking out of turn... yet.

"It says here," I pointed out a sentence in the full letter, "that I need to come to school with all of this stuff."

She sniffed, raising her nose in that way where she thinks it makes her look superior. "We are not spending one cent of our hard earned money on your school. They should have thought of this before they made us take you in. We had a good school lined up for you already." Her eyes gained a hard glint, "you wanted to go to the school, you figure it out."

"But-" I try to explain my dilemma. Also, when had I said that I wanted to go?

"Have you finished your chores for the day?" She ignored me, changing the subject.

"Are you gonna at least drive me to the train station?" I made myself ask. I could probably figure out how to get there on my own, but it would look very suspicious for a small eleven year old to go that distance on their own.

"I'll make a list. If you finish it before school starts, then yes."

I sighed and complied, not willing to fight her on it. All the complaining about how expensive it was to clothe and feed me ringing in my ears. I knew they wouldn't help me buy anything now.

In the end, Vernon dropped me off at the train station and drove off before I'd barely even finished closing the car door. On my back rested one of Dudley's old backpacks. Inside it was a few changes of clothes but not much else. Basically I was carrying my whole life in the thing.

I had no school supplies beyond a half used notebook and some broken pencils I had scrounged from the house. I couldn't bring myself to care, too worried about other things. And a large part of me was still expecting to either find out this was all a huge prank, or to wake up back in a hospital in the real world.

So with the letter clutched in hand and my heart beating wildly, I entered the train station.

It was bustling with people rushing to get to their trains and others unhurriedly making their way along, dragging large suitcases behind them.

I reached the platform between station 9 and 10, just like it said in the letter. I even consulted it one more time to be sure. When I look around, it just looks like a regular station platform. There's a train sitting on platform 9, its doors closed. A few people were sitting in benches facing the train, probably waiting to be allowed to board.

A surge of panic hit me and rooted me in place. What if I'd gotten it all wrong?

Also, how the hell was I supposed to tell which pillar between the stations was the entrance?

The urge to turn around and forget I ever received the fantastical letter was strong. Of course, the fact that my uncle basically stranded me leaves me with no other alternative.

I wandered up and down the platform, gripping the straps of my backpack and trying not to look suspicious. Instead, I tried to keep a sharp eye out for people disappearing into pillars.

For some reason, even with all the people milling about, no one asked if I needed help. Unlike the rest of the train station, no one even glanced in my direction.

It was weird.

Thankfully, a loud family caught my attention. They were all dressed like someone took a random mix of clothes from the donation bin and threw on whatever fit. It was because I was looking at them and creeping closer that I heard the only adult of the bunch of six yell the word, "Hogwarts".

I followed them, watching as they headed towards the pillar at the far end of the platform.

When the first child ran headfirst into the pillar I couldn't stop myself from gasping loudly at the sight. I was close enough and loud enough that the little girl clinging to her mother's sweater looked over at me. She smiled and put a finger to her lips.

I lingered behind the family, waiting for my chance to follow them through. The little girl looked up at her mother when the older woman grabbed her hand.

"Don't let go Ginny dear." The woman said.

_I can't believe I'm about to do this. I must really be going crazy... Still. I've gotten this far. I might as well see this to the end._

I followed on the heels of the woman while she pushed her cart toward the pillar. I was so close to her, I could reach out and touch her if I wanted. I followed so close because I didn't want to see the brick wall approaching. I was afraid I'd hesitate and lose my nerve.

A strange tingle rippled across my body and my ears popped.

The relative quiet of the platform between 9 and 10 was replaced with a noisy and bustling platform with an old-fashioned steam train sitting on the tracks. Birds in cages cried out while young kids yelled goodbye's to their parents.

I was so busy looking around in shock I almost didn't notice the little red haired girl yelling, "hey, you're not supposed to be here. Mom! A muggle boy followed us!"

The cry jolted me out of my head. Unfortunately the whole family turned to look at me before I could disappear into the crowd.

"What? A muggle boy?" The mother looked down at me in clear shock.

_And now I've been mistaken for a muggle. Well... fuck me._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: Thanks for reading! I've got a few more potential scenes planned out now, so I'll probably add more. Writing this is a good break from my other stories as well as a good change of pace by having the perspective be in first person.
> 
> There will be some swearing as well as some discussion of adult themes as the mind in Harry is an adult, but it will be minor. Just an fyi.


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